Posts Tagged ‘personal_care’

About 10 times a year I travel for my job. Sometimes the work that I do is quite easy, and I have more time to relax and do some sightseeing, or even make a vacation out of it. Other times the job can be quite stressful as we have to cater to our clients and make sure things go smoothly. When I need things to go especially well, I often enlist the services of the hotel concierge. Their advice is often invaluable in finding out the perfect restaurant in an unfamiliar city, for getting access to rooms at their hotel or another venue for impromptu meetings, or even getting umbrellas when an unexpected rain occurs. Of course, their work is rewarded with a generous tip.

A guest wanted to see the premier of the movie “Disclosure” but he didn’t want anyone sitting within three rows of him. Winke rallied staff members to go to the theater and buy enough tickets to block off several rows.

A mother of the bride left her contact lenses in a taxi and was upset about having to wear glasses to her daughter’s wedding. Concierge staff tracked down her California optician, got her prescription and had new contacts delivered to the hotel within two hours.

Have you ever used the hotel concierge to make your life easier? What was the strangest request that you have asked from one?

I have been nearsighted at least since I was in the third grade; thus I’ve had glasses at the early age of 9 years old. That pretty much disqualified me from becoming one of the cool kids. Then again, so did directly sitting in front of the television to watch all of those episodes of Tom and Jerry.

When I hit junior high and had an accompanying hormonal response to girls, I desperately wanted contact lenses. After an appropriate amount of badgering and promising I was responsible enough to take care of them, my parents eventually relented and let me have my first pair of contact lenses. Back then, contact lenses were to be treated like gold, as disposables were unheard of. I don’t know how much my parents paid for my first pair of contact lenses, but they made me take care of them like a newborn child.

Since then, I’ve gone though various phases alternating between glasses and contact lenses. Currently I’m in a contact lens phase. Over a year ago, I bought a one-year supply of 2-week disposable contacts. Today, in our bathroom closet I have about half of the order still remaining. You don’t need to do the math to figure out that I’ve been wearing my contact lenses past the recommended two-week period. At this rate, the remaining contact lenses will last until about another year from now.

I’m fully aware of elevated risks of eye infection by wearing contact lenses too long. I always take them out at night and soak them in solution. My crime is that I wear them for a little over a month before disposing of them. Half of me does this because I’m lazy; the other half does it so that I can make my contact lenses last longer, thus putting off getting another eye exam, contact lens fitting, and a new supply of contact lenses.

Am I being cheap or am I being frugal?

For disposable contact lens wearers: do you follow the manufacturer’s schedule of disposal, or do you wear yours past that date? Is it to save money or for another reason?

Over the past few months I’ve read a few things about the process of shaving. One of the places to have such a trivial debate was in the online humor magazine, McSweeney’s. They recommend:

Shaving without shaving cream when you first get out of the shower Few men are aware of this option, which, if broadly implemented, could bring Big Shaving Cream to its knees. Right out of a hot shower, your face is warm and soft. Wrap a towel around your waist, grab a razor, and go to work. No cream means you can see exactly where the whiskers are. No shirt means you stay clean. And, most important, it ends up being a better shave anyway.

In their Letters to McSweeney’s (no anchor text, so I can’t provide links to individual letters, sorry), there have been many comments about this:

People (and by “people” I mean “men and steroid-using women”), do NOT shave without some sort of gel/cream/lubricant on your face unless you enjoy facial bleeding and/or toilet-papering your face…

Fellas, do yourself a favor and give it a try—if only to take down “Big Shaving Cream,” which in my opinion needs to be taken down a notch. For example, I like to imagine, with every shave, that I am slowly taking down the Gillette company…

And one of my personal favorites that saves me money…

This is also the best time to pluck one’s eyebrows.

Then, a few weeks later, I came across an article on MSNBC about shaving via Digg detailing the Perfect Shave. It introduced a new term for me: Wet Shaving. The article goes ahead and suggests a few products for a successful Wet Shave:

Seriously though, shaving with one of these razors would just say to the world, “Look at your wimpy Mach 3. Pfft. Look at how huge my cajones are because I shave with this beast!” Heck, you can even join this forum of Wet Shavers and laugh at all of the puny regular shavers together!

While this article has piqued my interest in the finer art of shaving and shaving accessories, this weekend I had one of the best shaves ever, all by shaving after a shower, using liberal amount of hot water, and using a new Mach 3 blade. I may actually keep trying this routine until I gash my face pretty badly. Savings on shaving cream: $6 a year! And we personal finance bloggers all know how to compound that nice piece of change into a million bucks for retirement, right?

Much has been made of Him’s habit of getting rather expensive haircuts. We’ve had no real defense for this luxury purchase…until now. I recently came across a blog entry about a barber in New York who has been cutting hair for sixty-five years. That’s a long time! He seems trust-worthy, like a sweet old grandpa. And according to him,

I’m a little more high-maintenance than probably most male personal finance bloggers (and possibly even some females). I’m not like Jonathan over at MyMoneyBlog, who saved $250 in haircuts in the last year by having his wife cut his hair. I can’t stand having my hair look bad.

I get my haircut at a salon, not a barber shop, every five weeks. The cost of the whole thing is…

Wait for it…

$35.00. And I leave a $10.00 tip.

10.4 haircuts/year X $45 = $468 on haircuts.

This actually shocks me because this is the first time I’ve done this calculation. I can’t help it. I’ve had bad experiences in college letting my fraternity brothers cut my hair. I won’t let Her trim it a little so it doesn’t look ridiculous, even if it is about time to get my haircut and my hair is long.

But that’s okay! At the same salon, I used to get my eyebrows waxed. No person should have to look at the uncontrolled hairiness of a unibrow on a man. That alone cost $12.00, plus a few bucks for the tip. I quit doing that after realizing that my eyebrows were looking a little too feminine. Now I just shave in between the brows and pluck until it looks neat. I’m SAVING money by just doing that myself right? YEAH!

I haven’t jumped to nail care…yet. Although they do look like they could use some work.

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